My Journey of Faith

We read in scripture - Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. 

But what if we don’t have that confidence. We want or need to see it – a Crisis of faith 

I was born the third of four children in a Christian family going to church every Sunday. I was baptized as a baby and after asking Jesus into my life at fifteen I confirmed that baptism in a special service at the Presbyterian church I call our family church in Wellington, where we were married and I still go to when I am down there. 

Being a Christian was just a part of who I was and I realize over the years listening to other people’s testimonies, I have been truly blessed with my upbringing and love in our family. 

Numerous times in our married life my faith has been the only thing that got us through difficult times.

I felt extremely fortunate to work in our church office here for thirteen years but in 2019 I felt God say it was time for something new. I had spent the first twenty years of my life growing up so to speak. The next twenty years married and raising our five children, then twenty years working part-time as we became empty nesters. I felt God say it was time for ‘me’ time and that the next twenty years were to be spent with Harry and just enjoying our later years together. I handed in my notice to finish work in September and looked forward to what was in store. 

In 2020, three months after I had retired, I lost my sister to cancer in the January after her diagnosis in late October a month after I had retired. We all had to deal with the start of COVID and then my mother died in August. A few weeks later our Pastor John died, someone who I had worked closely with for five years and formed a close friendship with, sharing many thoughts, ideas, frustrations and concerns, and a couple of other friends passed away. 

I found myself being angry. If God is love as the Bible says, this didn’t feel like love. 

I prayed for the recovery of my sister, and we all prayed and believed John would win the battle, but they didn’t. Some of us had “visions” of healing for John, but it didn’t happen. 

So, what were we thinking? 

Imaginations? 

Wishful thinking? 

What was the point? 

Our Parish Chairman had said during John’s illness, “God tells us to ‘pray without ceasing’ “– so why did we all pray when it wasn’t going to actually happen. I believed it would happen – but it didn’t. I believed it was God’s will for John to live and that he would be healed and it would be a miracle. 

Sure, I know we all die eventually and I am at peace with my mother passing. I understand that ‘badness’ gets into things and it turns rotten so they die, it was just that it all happened in quick succession … and we had prayed….

What I didn’t understand is belief in God. 

How do we know that Jesus is God, was crucified, died and came alive again to then go into heaven?

It’s written in the Bible but, 

How do we know the Bible is true? 

I wanted to know, I kind of wanted to believe but how do I find the true facts.

I seemed to come into this space of being lost while in Wellington. 

I had been with Dad just on a month after mum’s passing to sort Mum’s clothes and other bits and pieces, on Dad's request, and to see Dad so overwhelmed with his grief; me having to leave and him not wanting me to, I was wondering where was the peace of God when he believed and needed it most. 

As I drove home on my own, I stopped to rest beside lake Taupo to have some fruit and just let myself relax a bit for the last part home. 

I watched the birds, the water, the lone bare tree and that’s how I felt. 

Alone, exposed and lost. God talks to me through nature and especially bird life. 

As I pondered, I didn’t feel God was there; I didn’t feel His comfort and I wondered if it was all true. 

By the time I got home, unpacked and ready for bed I was completely overwhelmed with it all and I cried, I sobbed and I just felt the weight of it all come upon me. My husband Harry found me and just held me and put me to bed. 

I was very low. 

I stopped going to 8.00am service. 

I stopped doing KFC church. 

I stopped going to mainly music 

I didn’t think I could be an elder. 

I stopped doing a lot of things… 

I emailed our Parish Chairman to say I wanted to withdraw from everything, maybe even Tirau Church, and he rung and asked why. I said I don’t know what I believe any more and he asked me to come and talk with his wife and him. 

We talked and they spoke the words we all speak about faith, believing and all that… I knew all that, but I wanted proof. 

They said read the Bible and let God talk to me. 

But I wanted truth. 

I wanted someone to physically show me and give me proof that God, the Bible … that it was all true. 

They prayed and I started a journal - a journey to find God. 

When you have been a Christian for a long time you just have the Truth fed into you and it’s trapped in there. 

By that I mean even when I was choosing to need evidence, God used all that was inside me (the Holy Spirit) to take me on this journey. 

I was having a personal battle really. All that was in me was there, but I was not wanting to believe it. 

A Crisis of Faith 

Now to start with, I needed confirmation that there is God. It’s all very fine to believe in the Bible but there needs to be a starting point. I asked Harry if he believed there was a God, ‘Do you believe in creation?’ His response was, “It didn’t just happen”. And with most things this man of wisdom was right. 

Even if the evolution theory was true, it still had to evolve somehow. Something or someone had to start it off. It didn’t just happen. 

God 

In my mind I set out believing, that I had chosen not to believe – like I am deciding that God has to prove Himself to me, as if to say “If you are really real – God – then I need you to do something.” Maybe a loud voice, maybe a vision or appearance. I didn’t know what, but I found myself wanting Him to do something. 

The Parish Chairman had suggested I read Psalm 119 so that was where I started and I found it echoed how I felt. 

25 I am laid low in the dust; preserve my life according to your word. 

27 Cause me to understand the way of your precepts, that I may meditate on your wonderful deeds. 

28 My soul is weary with sorrow; strengthen me according to your word. 

29 Keep me from deceitful ways; be gracious to me and teach me your law. 

33 Teach me, Lord, the way of your decrees, that I may follow it to the end. 

34 Give me understanding, so that I may keep your law and obey it with all my heart. 

35 Direct me in the path of your commands, for there I find delight. 

36 Turn my heart toward your statutes and not toward selfish gain. 

37 Turn my eyes away from worthless things; preserve my life according to your word. 

38 Fulfill your promise to your servant, so that you may be feared.  

So I prayed

See I thought I didn’t believe but I still did what was second nature and I prayed. 

I sat in silence waiting – and nothing profound happened. But still those thoughts came in to my head. Pieces of scripture, things we are told, but I wondered is it God or is it just me recalling all that I knew.

As I said, one thing with being a Christian for so long is we are fed by the reading of scripture, we are encouraged by people’s faith, testimonies, sermons and good books, songs and YouTube clips. And with the Holy Spirit in us that is all stored up without us really realizing it. Then when we need it, the Spirit brings it to mind. 

So, if we decide to not believe it any more, it shouldn’t keep coming to mind to remind us, should it? 

But I couldn’t help it constantly being recalled to me. It’s like it won’t let me break away, I now know it was the Holy Spirit. 

I realised that God is a creator God, so He does exist. 

But what about the Bible? I didn’t know. 

I supposed because it tells us about the creator God it must be true, but how do we know? How can you trust it without proof? 

Then I find myself wanting to believe. Everything I’ve read and can recall in the Bible comes to mind – telling me. So, do I just believe? … because it’s the thing to do? 

The next time I went to church I was really hoping to hear something that would firm everything up for me but it was a quest speaker and he was speaking to the rest of the congregation not me (so it felt) and I left desperate to get away and home, but not before "R" wanted to hug me and pray, and "M.1" followed me to the car saying she wanted to catch up with me. 

Once home I felt safe and txt "M.1" 

"M.2" txt to see if she could come and see how I was and I said no. Hmm, "M.2" had other ideas and appeared. She listened and prayed and held me while I cried. 

I wrote in my journal that day, “I just felt so sad and lost again. I realize I wanted to hear – what I wanted to hear, but didn’t (at church), but what ‘did’ I want to hear. That God is real, because…. Not just because the Bible says, because who says the Bible is true. I just didn’t know it anymore – what is true? 

What IS true? 

I decided to google Christianity – what is it? 

Wikipedia said: 

• Belief in God the Father, Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and the Holy Spirit 

• The death, descent into hell, resurrection and ascension of Christ 

• The holiness of the Church and the communion of saints 

• Christ's second coming, the Day of Judgement and salvation of the faithful 

A BBC page said: 

Christians believe in justification by faith - that through their belief in Jesus as the Son of God, and in his death and resurrection, they can have a right relationship with God whose forgiveness was made once and for all through the death of Jesus Christ. 

Justification by faith – a person can achieve salvation only through faith and reliance on God's grace, Dictionary.com 

It all came back to Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. 

 

Hebrews 11:6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. 

Believe God exists! Like Thomas I want to see. 

(Read John 20:25-29) 

John 20:25 So the other disciples told him (Thomas), “We have seen the Lord!” 

But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” 

John 20:29 Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” 

Thomas got to see, he even got to touch. Jesus even said those who don’t see but believe are blessed. Jesus had also said “Stop doubting and believe” (V27) 

Part of me just wanted to believe, but the other part – the part that was struggling and wanted to make sense of all this wanted proof. Proof that God is real – that the Bible is God breathed.

How did it come to this? As "M.2" had asked “When did this thinking come in? when did it all change?"

In my leaving my father and unable to help. 

I pondered all this and that I’d been wanting some huge revelation – a vision, a loud voice, a shaking or message. I realised I WANT THIS. In all my grief, my loneliness, my overwhelming despair, I wanted something to show me “He IS”. 

In the following couple of weeks God carried me through and showed me the Truth. Through reading blogs on the internet, listening to podcasts, reading the Bible I came to believe; God is real, the Bible is the truth and I have been saved by His work He finished on the cross and entered heaven to prepare a place for us. No loud voices or messages, shakings or bright lights but in the way that He has always shown me, He came through. 

I remember in the journal I finished with the story of the lost sheep Luke 15:3–7 and how God searched for me and carried me home. There was joy that I realized He would do that for me. 

Little did I know how much this whole experience was not just because of the low time I had fallen into and a need to know the truth, but it was to make me stronger, to cement my faith and that it would indeed save me. 

In March last year the first time God needed me to trust in Him happened when I was rushed to Hospital with Wolff Parkinson White Syndrome. 

Through a continuing series of circumstances, I ended up in hospital and had corrective surgery to laser burn off an electrical pathway in my heart that I had been born with but never had properly diagnosed. This although not a too common mistake was a straightforward procedure and I was home within less than a week. 

Since then I have posted a grateful post on Facebook every day for 18 months minus 3 or 4 days. I’ve since changed it to something that makes me smile 

Life ticked along and although COVID is still around, my dad has deteriorated I was comfortable in what I believed. 

Matthew 10:27 What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs. 

Matthew 10:29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. 30 And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. 31 So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. 32 “Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven.

Then Friday September 10th happened